US Hispanics love the Internet, but not localized web sites

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I came across an interesting presentation today via Carla Briceno. The survey, sponsored by AOL and conducted by Cheskin, was based on interviewing more than a thousand Hispanic households across the US about how they view and use the Internet.

First some data points. Looking ahead at the 2010 census:

50 Million Hispanics will be living in the US

Nearly one in six US residents will be Hispanis

Los Angeles County is expected to be home to the largest Hispanic population in the US – exceeding that of Costa Rica

Two slides jumped out at me. The first slide noted:

Only 3% of respondents found Spanish language sites more trustworthy and useful than those in English, leaving an important percentage of the Hispanic segment feeling underserved.

Why? Because all too often localized Hispanic sites are simply literal translations of the English sites. And these web users want much more than literal translation. After all, most of them can migrate easily between English and Spanish sites.

I guess you misread the context of this statistic. I think it means that only 3% think that ‘generally, Spanish sites are better than English sites’. I do not think it is about comparing the Spanish version of siteX to its English version.

Put like that, 3% actually seems like a large figure. English sites generally are more mature.